There was something different about this show and its hero. Eventually, after watching a sixth-season episode that made me curious about story lines I had missed, I went on the Internet to catch up, and fell in love.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first time Xena rode onto America's television screens. Actually, not quite the first: the Warrior Princess, played by New Zealand's Lucy Lawless, had debuted several months earlier on "Xena's" parent show, "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," as an evil warlord (warlady?) plotting to kill the great Hercules. This first incarnation of Xena was less a true warrior than a femme fatale who kicked ass. Still, the character appealed to viewers and producers alike: Originally meant to turn good, have a fling with Hercules, and die at the end of a thee-episode arc, Xena got a reprieve and a show of her own. For the next six years, she battled on, conquered the syndicated action/adventure market and changed history -- the history of the world in the Xenaverse and the history of popular culture in real life.

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The tactics of Bryant's defense team, which has demanded access to the young woman's mental health records and suggested that she had sex with three different partners in the days before and after the alleged rape, have been roundly deplored by feminists and victims' rights advocates. In New York Newsday, writer Lorraine Dusky has slammed defense attorney Pamela Mackey for "amoral antics." Wendy Murphy, a former sex crimes prosecutor who teaches at the New England School of Law and appears regularly on television, charges that the defense has exploited misogynistic myths about rape accusers -- "that women are mentally ill, and vindictive, and lie for sport."

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The latest setback took place in Michigan late in March. Judge Bernard Friedman of the U.S. District Court in Detroit ruled that the admissions system at the University of Michigan Law School was illegal because it favored black and Hispanic applicants. The decision, the implementation of which is on hold pending appeals, came less than four months after another federal judge in Detroit, Patrick Duggan, handed defenders of affirmative action a rare victory, upholding the university's even more race-conscious undergraduate admissions policies. One or both cases could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court -- which, given its current leanings, may well deliver a death blow to racial and ethnic preferences in college admissions.

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Nevertheless, science remains an overwhelmingly male field: At some leading research institutions, the percentage of women faculty in science departments is still in the single digits.

Now, as the New York Times reports in its quarterly Education Life supplement, a movement that seeks to remedy bias against women in science is sweeping universities.

But is this effort, which the Times says could "change the face of science education," based on facts or myth? And is it championing gender justice or gender politics?

A major victory for proponents of women in science occurred in late January when top administrators and professors from nine major universities -- including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford -- met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a symposium on gender equity in science and engineering. They issued a terse though vague statement recognizing that "barriers still exist" and pledging to work for change.

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The grandmother of all middle-class entitlements, Social Security is undoubtedly the most popular government program in America, credited with dramatically reducing old-age poverty. Yet it has a major structural flaw that you don't need to be a whiz to grasp. The people who work and pay into the system are financing the benefits of today's retirees while relying on the next generation of workers to fund their future benefits. However, there are fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more beneficiaries -- both because people are living longer and staying around to collect the checks, and because birth rates fell sharply after 1960. In 1950, the ratio of workers to pensioners was 16 to 1; today, it's 3.3 to 1, and in 25 years it's projected to drop to 2 to 1.

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They're called men.

It is widely assumed by activists on both sides of the debate that legal abortion puts women on equal footing with men, giving them the same freedom to enjoy sex without consequences. Actually, when sex results in conception, the man and the woman find themselves on very unequal footing.

If she does not want to be a mother, a woman can end the pregnancy, with or without her partner's knowledge. (It's hard to tell how RU-486 will affect a woman's ability to exclude the man from her decision; a drug-induced abortion at home may be more private and less invasive than surgery at a clinic, but it's not easy to hide from an intimate partner.)

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The newest book from the 78-year-old family therapist, coauthored by Julia Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee, is unlikely to calm any nerves. "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study" delivers the bad news that the wounds of divorce are not healed by time: Indeed, Wallerstein writes, "it's in adulthood that children of divorce suffer the most."

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Women's healthcare, on the face of it, looks like the kind of motherhood-and-apple-pie cause that no reasonable or decent person could oppose. It probably has more bipartisan support than any other "women's issue." Eager to woo women back, the Bush campaign is also portraying George W. as the real women's health champion, pointing out that as governor of Texas he signed into law many of the same benefits Gore is now promising. But this seemingly wholesome women's crusade has a dark underside. It has used fictions and half-truths to polarize the sexes and promote fear and resentment among women. Combining elements of radical feminism and traditional paternalism, it has turned healthcare into a battleground for gender politics in which men, too, are now vying for the title of victim.

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But the debate over the WNBA may be even more interesting than the playoffs. The league remains a battlefield for gender politics, and here, the arguments are as familiar as a Houston-New York championship series.

To the WNBA's detractors -- from anonymous Web surfers who post abusive messages in women's basketball chat rooms, to many sports radio talk-show hosts and a few conservative commentators -- the "league of their own" is an insidious exercise in political correctness, an attempt to shove a ridiculous pseudo-sport down the throats of the American public in the name of gender equity. After Slate, for instance, published an article praising the WNBA's dynasty, the Houston Comets, one response posted on the site's message boards derided the Comets' trophies as "glorified doorstops" while another rather graphically claimed that it was better to be "de-balled with a rusty spoon" than to watch a WNBA game. Last year, Debbie Schlussel, a columnist for the Jewish World Review, sneered that the WNBA should really stand for "Weird Nuisance Brought on America."

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The revolt of the "child-free" has been getting quite a bit of attention, due mainly to the publication of "The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly America Cheats the Childless" by journalist Elinor Burkett, a manifesto of sorts for this fledgling movement. The premier organization of the "child-free," called No Kidding!, has grown from two chapters to 47 in five years. Most recently, the anti-child/anti-parent backlash is the subject of a long cover story by Lisa Belkin in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

The angry nonparents believe they are being treated as second-class citizens in a "procreation-obsessed" America. They feel shafted by the tax code, with all the dependent deductions and child-care credits, and by working-parent benefits such as family leave and on-site day care. They gripe about a lot of things: having to pick up the slack for "child-burdened" co-workers; enduring the noise of squalling kids in restaurants; the unfair privilege of parking spaces reserved for pregnant women and parents with babies or toddlers; inappropriate questioning of their choice not to have children.

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There's only one catch: Mitchell's crusade is on behalf of fathers.

Indeed, even the way Mitchell (now 42 and the happily married mother of a 2-year-old boy) tells her own story may be startling to those used to the Lifetime formula. While she says that she was a battered wife, she refuses to cast herself as a victim and her first husband as a villain; in her view, he was a troubled young man with a drinking problem who has since done a great deal to turn his life around. She is careful to point out that she gave up child support voluntarily, because at the time she was doing much better than her ex-husband -- who was remarried with two kids and a third on the way, and had been laid off from his job. Mitchell also stresses that her ex is a loving father who has always had a strong relationship with their daughter, and that she has always encouraged this relationship.

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The American Association of University Women and the Ms. Foundation sounded the alarm with largely uncritical media coverage and support from female-friendly politicians. Mary Pipher's "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls," which lamented that "the selves of girls ... crash and burn" in our "girl-poisoning culture," became a bestseller. Take Our Daughters to Work Day became a big hit; and Congress boosted funding for programs to combat gender bias in education. Some school districts experimented with single-sex classes and even all-girl schools as an answer to the inequities supposedly pervading coed classrooms.

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"Ma-ma," gurgles the baby.

"Say Da-da."

"Ma-ma," insists the baby.

A tag line appears at the bottom of the screen: "Baby's first word. Another great reason for being a woman."

This recent commercial for Oxygen, the female-oriented interactive cable channel and Web site, prompted some angry posts from offended dads on Oxygen.com message boards. Were they being too sensitive? Not if you consider that the "baby's first words" commercial is part of a barrage of cultural messages telling fathers that no matter what, they're always going to be in second place in their children's emotional lives. What's more, it looks like women are taking gleeful pleasure in men's second-class status. For a gender reversal, try to imagine a commercial making fun of a woman's helpless attempts to pump gas until a guy comes to the rescue.

From a woman's point of view, the Oxygen commercial might look like innocent fun, a way to make women feel good about themselves and about the special things they have in common. Yet in the end, this warm and fuzzy tribute to womanhood may not be so good for women, either. It appeals to an attitude -- call it maternal chauvinism -- that helps perpetuate the unequal division of labor at home and holds women back in the workplace.

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Riggs, a former nurse, was put to death despite pleas for her life from anti-death-penalty groups including Amnesty International and the American Civil Libertes Union. In fact, there was little difference between the execution of Riggs and the other 28 executions carried out in the United States so far this year, except that Riggs, who said she wanted to die to be with her "babies," had refused to appeal her sentence or to seek clemency from Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

And yet her death was much bigger news.

The cause for intense public soul-searching and beating of breasts was not the nature of Riggs' crime or her wish to die. It was her gender. It was, for all intents and purposes, a demonstration of garden-variety sexism. And this isn't the first time our hypocrisy has been blatantly displayed.

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Sometimes I try to imagine myself in Elian's place. Suppose my mother had tried to spirit my 6-year-old self out of Russia and died in the escape, and I had ended up somewhere in the West with relatives I barely knew. Of course I would have wanted to be back with my father and my grandmother.

But I also know something about growing up under communism. I wasn't much older than Elian when I already knew that if I told anyone about the things my parents said at home -- for instance, that Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, was not really the greatest human being who ever lived (as we were taught at school), or that the Soviet Union was not really a shining beacon for all humankind -- mommy and daddy would go to jail.

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There is little doubt that the much-maligned gun lobby has engaged in some extreme rhetoric and has opposed sensible restrictions backed by most Americans (including gun owners), such as waiting periods and mandatory background checks for handgun purchases. But it is equally true that many members of the chattering classes feel such a visceral aversion toward guns that they are inclined to accept shaky anti-gun arguments and to disregard any evidence that, perish the thought, Charlton Heston may sometimes have a point.

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And yet two days before Valentine's Day, here we were at a conference in London titled "Sex Wars," discussing such familiar problems as the politicization of the personal, the demonization of men and paranoia about sex and relationships.

The conference, held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts just a short walk from Buckingham Palace -- itself the site of some famous sex wars in recent memory -- was organized by a discussion/debate group called the Maverick Club and the libertarian-leaning, iconoclastic monthly LM.

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The speakers -- "Each in her own way represents today's woman," we were told by the Y program director -- were Gloria Steinem (probably accustomed by now to being introduced as someone who "needs no introduction"), feminist professor and prolific author bell hooks, poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman and short-story writer Amy Bloom. Despite the presence of Steinem and hooks, there was surprisingly little in the way of gender politics. Hooks, probably the most prominent African-American feminist in the public arena today, did warn at one point -- after disclosing that she feels "panicked" when bright, talented women students marry at 22 or 23 -- that "Patriarchy hasn't gone away; it hasn't changed; though because of feminism we have more freedoms within it."

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"Modern feminism, until recently at least," the late social critic Christopher Lasch wrote in a 1993 essay, "promised not to intensify sexual warfare but to bring about a new era of sexual peace in which women and men could meet each other as equals, not as antagonists." If so, its promise certainly hasn't been fulfilled. Harmony between the sexes sometimes seems more elusive than ever. It's no accident that a perennial bestseller of the 1990s was a book built on the concept that the problems between men and women stem from forgetting that we're creatures from different planets.

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For this offense, 44-year-old Stewart is now serving a six-month sentence in
the Norfolk House of Correction.

Stewart was convicted in June of violating a restraining order that
prohibited him from exiting his car near his ex-wife's home. He got a
suspended sentence conditional on completing a batterers treatment
program, in which participants must sign a statement taking responsibility
for their violence.

That was something Stewart refused to do. He has never been charged with spousal assault and insists that the only violence in his marriage was by his ex-wife against him. (While his former wife told reporters that Stewart was dangerously unstable, her examples -- that he had watched "prison movies" with his 8- and 6-year-old sons and promised to send them some live caterpillars to grow into butterflies -- seem shocking only in their innocuousness.) On Aug. 18, he appeared in Quincy District Court and again declared that he was not a batterer and would not enroll in any program that required him to admit to being one. Stewart was ordered to start serving his jail term immediately.

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